Submission

I submitted my thesis yesterday.

After a week spent basically correcting it, and then a day spent correcting the typesetting program that insisted the margins of the pages should do something completely nonsensical, it was a great relief when I finally bound my three copies yesterday afternoon and went over to the Foundation Building to hand them in.

It was, however, an anti-climax to have the member of staff receiving them greet my enthusiastic "I'm here to submit my PhD thesis!" with a disinterested "Do you have the right form?"

Still, the relief of getting it in (and slightly ahead of the deadline I gave myself) is great - although it's only really starting to sink in. I don't have any big celebratory plans over the weekend; my family and I were talking about going out for a meal, but it seems that there isn't a time over the weekend when all four of us are free. If they're all busy tomorrow afternoon I might go to the theatre actually, there's a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Playhouse that might be good. I also want to go and see Samuel Beckett's End Game which starts at the Everyman today...

I've not been to the theatre in a while, but seeing another Met in HD opera on Saturday has really put me in the mood. Now, if only I can persuade someone to go and see La Fille du Régiment...

More very soon, and from next week (probably) I'll be updating a new blog as well, chronicling my efforts to do 101 Things in 1001 Days...

Boys Don't Cry

I saw another of the Metropolitan Opera's "Live in HD" performances on Saturday, and once again I was not disappointed. I didn't really know the story of Manon Lescaut, or of Puccini's adaptation, but my mum knew something of it and had picked this one out as one of the four she wanted to see for this season.

As with Eugene Onegin last year, I was completely entranced from start to finish. So far this year I have already seen operas of Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet, but somehow they didn't quite match up to the Manon Lescaut on Saturday, and all have failed to capture me as Eugene Onegin did. I'm not sure why exactly, but I wonder if it is precisely because I know the stories of Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet so well that they didn't grip me as much; I was always wondering (knowing that adaptations take small liberties) "Is that character going to appear?" "I wonder how they will do this?" and so on. Not knowing Eugene Onegin or Manon Lescaut beforehand perhaps allowed me to just soak it all in without thinking about what was to come.

One thing that both Onegin and Manon Lescaut have both managed to do is get me really choked up. Now, I'm not a macho guy by any stretch, and I'm not so reserved as thinking that there is something wrong per se with men crying, but I like to keep my tears to myself if at all possible. Onegin and Manon Lescaut involved me so much that I almost lost it; Des Grieux's grief and pleading at the end of Act III on Saturday was so emotional that it was as if it had cut me to the quick. Similarly, there were several moments in the performance of Onegin I saw last year that almost reduced me to tears, even more so than Manon Lescaut.

I'm not about to expouse some great theory about all this, but I think that there is something profoundly amazing with art/media - be it opera, theatre, film, literature, whatever - if it can effect an emotional response in a person to move them to tears or have them welling up. Comedy, drama, an interesting philosophical notion that makes you think for hours afterwards, all of these are good... But to move a person to tears is something else altogether; I think it's maybe because tears are such a private thing, we associate them with such personal events in our lives.

I don't remember the last time I watched a film that moved me that much*. And I could count on one hand the number of times a book has moved me so profoundly ("Flowers For Algernon," "Earth Abides," the last few chapters of "The Return Of The King").

How about you? What art/media moves you?

More soon.

*OK, I do remember, it was Terminator 2 when the Terminator is lowered into the steel at the end of the film. "I know now why you cry... But it is something that I can never do."

In my defence, I was a kid at the time!

End of the Week

It looks like it will be a fairly busy weekend, which probably won't feel that weird since it has been a fairly week. Hit a bit of a low patch yesterday; I think that I've been kidding myself in the past by how hard I had been working on my thesis when it's come to writing it up. This week has been something of a baptism of fire when it comes to meeting the targets that I have set myself in order to submit by the end of March.

(it should be noted that there is nothing inherently wrong with me submitting after the 31st of March, this is just the date that I have picked and am aiming for)

So I have an A4 sheet with my targets and so on in front of me, next to a Tim Sale postcard from Heroes (Tim Sale was the comics artist who did the artworks for the character Isaac), of Peter Petrelli jumping off the top of a building and flying. Both motivate me, though, it has to be said, from the opposite ends of the motivational spectrum.

Tomorrow I'm getting a haircut, and while my hair isn't usually especially long I think I am going to get it cut pretty short. Does the phrase "a four down to a two" mean anything to you? It has something to do with lengths, and I've had it before. It's short, but you can't see my skull.

After that have to visit my nan at the residential home, then on to shopping for birthday presents (three in the next week, including my sister's on Sunday) and in the evening I am going to see Verdi's Macbeth. It's the latest opera in the Met in High Definition series, where the Metropolitan Opera in New York broadcasts a performance to theatres and cinemas all around the world. I saw Romeo et Juliette before Christmas, which was really good - but the Scottish Play is just amazing (my favourite work of Shakespeare's is The Tempest, more on that another time I hope) and I'm really excited to be going to see it as an opera.

But right now I have to sign off as I am going to meet some friends for dinner, and then possibly go on to see the opening celebrations to Liverpool's European Capital of Culture Year. I'm already knackered though, so I'll just have to see how I feel after going for some Indian food.

Be good!